The much leaked Samsung i5700, or Galaxy Spica as it'll be known as has finally gotten official and it's available in Europe, Russia and soon the Middle East and Asia as well. This is Samsung's second Android handset and this time we're looking at a little bit more budget friendly handset than the original Galaxy.

That doesn't mean that Samsung has cut out all the features, as the Galaxy Spica still has plenty on offer as long as you're happy to live with a slightly lower resolution display. Samsung has fitted a 3.2-inch touch screen display with 480x320 resolution (also known as HVGA). This is still better than many Windows Mobile devices which still ship with 320x240 displays.

The CPU is running at a nippy 800MHz making the Galaxy Spica faster than most other Android handsets currently on the market. It only has 180MB of user accessible memory which isn't much, but there's a micro SD card slot that allows for memory expansion up to 32GB. Other features include 802.11b/g WiFi - a feature Samsung doesn't tend to include on lower-end Smarphones - Bluetooth 2.1, a micro USB 2.0 port, a 3 Megapixel camera with auto focus, a built in GPS and a 3.5mm audio jack.

The Galaxy Spica offers quad band GSM support with EDGE as well as 900 and 2,100MHz 3G support with 3.6Mbps HSDPA data speeds. It's running Android 1.5 and Samsung has added support for DivX video and WMV on top of the regular assortment of supported file formats.

Although Samsung hasn't specified the battery life in the press release, the Galaxy Spica has a 1,500mAh battery which should offer pretty decent battery life. The handset measures 115x57x13.2mm (HxWxD) although again we're missing the weight at the moment. No word on pricing as yet, but the Galaxy Spica will be priced cheaper than the Galaxy.